Up Your Ass with a Pint from a Glass

I've said it a million times. Let's make it a million and one: I'm sooo glad I'm not a teenager anymore. It was bad enough in the late '80s and early '90s, when you could hardly pick your nose without some concerned oaf pestering you about drug abuse, suicide or the importance of wearing a bike helmet (this captures the general tenor of the era rather nicely). Kids these days have all of that, but they're also no doubt having to sit through lectures about the drawbacks of shooting your classmates, huffing Drano, cutting and the 'choking game'.

Could it get any worse? It just got worse. From the Stevens Point Journal, under the headline Youth get creative in drug use:

"Drug use among central Wisconsin children isn't the only concern for parents and law enforcement officials, who also worry about dangerous behavior that continues in central Wisconsin youths.

"Huffing, choking and..."

Hold on. I need to take a minute before I can go on. Let me take a deep breath. Alright. Let's try this again.

"Huffing, choking and alcohol enemas are some of the methods children are using to get high,said Wisconsin Rapids Police Detective Phyllis Wesener. Those actions can lead to brain damage or even death."

I dunno, it seems to me that anyone who says that an alcohol enema could lead to brain damage has it exactly backwards. But I feel we must press on.

"The alcohol is absorbed in the intestines and can get the teenager drunk quickly. An alternative method is to soak a tampon in alcohol and insert it."

Dear god man, WHY DON'T YOU JUST DRINK IT????????

"Participants believe there is less chance of getting caught because their breath won't smell of alcohol, although the alcohol will work its way into the system and can be smelled."

...!

"Teenagers are sharing information about the practice online, as Wesener found 15 pages of information on alcohol enemas on the Web in less than five minutes. The pages were from chat rooms and included tips on the best methods to use and actual enema recipes."

As I'm posting this at work, I'll wait until later to google 'alcohol enemas'.

"The alcohol enemas also can have serious consequences, Wesener said. The alcohol can be absorbed quickly, causing dangerously high blood-alcohol concentrations. Someone who passes out might end up in an emergency room with doctors not realizing the person still is absorbing alcohol."

Who are these people? What are their names? Hasn't it occured to them that there may be other ways to mask the tell-tale scent of booze breath? If there really is an epidemic of kids pouring Pabst down the wrong end, then where are the police reports and hospital records and teary-eyed confessions and medical statistics and other kinds of, y'know, proof? Detective Phyllis doesn't point to anything tangible to suggest a rise in this type of behavior, let alone a single verfiable incident - are we just supposed to trust her? Isn't there some kind of rule that says that outlandish claims have to be verified before they can be published in a newspaper?

But forget all that right now. Let's say that this checks out: this is how, in 2006, teenagers throughout America (or at least central Wisconsin) really are getting their kicks (but, like, how do they even do this? Do they self-administer (jeez, as if solo drinking wasn't depresing enough...)? Do kids do this for other kids? Is there some kind of self-regulating rectal drip that you can buy over the counter at Walgreen's™?). If this is true, don't you think it might be a good excuse to step back and maybe re-examine, in the cool blue light of reality, the way alcohol is regulated? Not to put too fine a point on it, but(t): if teenagers are so all-fired desperate for a cocktail that - immediately after adding all the ingrediants, mixing it up in a shaker, pouring it into the properly-shaped glass and tracking down a garnish - they are squirting them up their own assholes, can we declare that any heretofore-attempted 'alcohol-prevention' program has well and truly failed? I would think that this would've been a good question to put to Detective Phyllis at some point in the article; this, along with research, seems like something that the Journal reporter isn't interested in.

I wasn't what you'd call a wild party animal or anything, but I did my share of drinking when I was a teenager; so did most of my friends, few of whom were Blutarskys-in-training. My parents' generation, though - at least, according to my parents - were another matter altogether. When my mom was a teenager in the '50s, the drinking age was a) 18 and b) not enforced. She's told me many stories of youthful blind drunkenness and the adventures that ensued (including but not limited to driving home, which right there is dumber than anything I ever did while sauced-out). A few of her friends from those days ended their lives in booze-induced mishaps; probably more than a few became alcoholics. I'm not claiming that there are no potentially negative consequences to consider.

But beer commercials don't lie: drinking is fun and cool; that's why people do it. This is particularly true in Wisconsin. I have to chuckle at Detective Phyllis's efforts to curb 'teen drinking' in a region which was, economically, practically built on breweries. Even the state government here has only restricted access to booze with great reluctance, and usually at the urging of the feds (most notoriously in the late '80s, when President "Let's Get Big Government Off Our Backs" Reagan's Department of Transportation threatened to withold highway funds to the state unless it raised the drinking age to 21). 'Teens' have been drinking in this state since before anyone called them that, and somehow we were able to make it into the 21st century. No matter how many MADD floats I saw in the homecoming parade or how many retarded videos I watched in health class which purported to show 'the truth' about the dangers of booze, I still wanted to scare up some firewater on the weekend. I don't think that kids today (or kids in the future) are going to magically turn out any different, no matter how much screeching they have to endure.

I realize that its kind of goofy to devote so many words and so much venom to kicking this story's shins - what's easier than poking fun at small-town journalism? But just check out the last two creepy paragraphs:

"Parents should be aware of what children could be doing. Symptoms of the activities are similar to symptoms seen in drug users, she said. If a child has personality changes, becomes withdrawn, changes friends or is acting differently, parents should talk to them. It's also important to question things that seem out of place, like a bottle of cleaner in a child's bedroom.

"Wesener advises parents who believe their children are participating in these activities to take them to a doctor. The first thing is to have the children examined to be sure they haven't caused any permanent damage to themselves. Parents then should take their children to a counselor or other professional to get help in changing the behavior."

What kid wouldn't need a glass (or bag) of beer after that?